Windows 2000: The Dev Team Answers
The Dev Team at Microsoft has the answer to the question of leaving Windows NT 4.0 on a system while upgrading to Windows 2000. With a dual boot configuration available with Windows 2000 this is possible. They do recommend that you upgrade your NT system with Service Pack 4, which contains an updated driver that allows Windows NT to read and write from the NTFS in Windows 2000.
Windows 2000 does support user-level security options as much as previous versions of Windows NT and Windows 9x. Simply create an account for each user on the system they wish access to, and they must supply a username and a password to gain access to the files. Guest accounts or groups can be created if you do not wish to create accounts for everyone accessing the system. This can be done in a few easy steps:
- Open Users and Passwords in the Control Panel
- Under the Advanced tab in Advanced User Management click Advanced
- Under the Local Users and Groups heading, choose Users
- In the details section, right-click Guest and then Properties
- Under Properties, clear the Disable Account checkbox and hit OK
On a final note, The Dev Team reports that DVD will be supported in Windows 2000 with the use of a hardware based MPEG encoder. To check your hardware compatibility visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/upgrade/compat/search/default.asp and choose Hardware Devices > Video to find yours.
